Festival Miami Artist Bio

Pamela McConnell

Pamela McConnell (viola) is professor of instrumental performance at the University of Miami Frost School of Music where she is also coordinator of string chamber music and artistic director of the Frost Chamber Players. McConnell is highly regarded as a concert violist, adjudicator and master teacher. Her recent string quartet arrangements of the beloved orchestral works, Saint Seans’ Carnival of the Animals, and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf are highly popular in concert. She has performed as soloist and chamber musician throughout the world and at such prestigious venues as the Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, and the Gardner Museum of Boston. She was previously on the faculties of University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and State University of New York at Buffalo, where, as a member of the Rowe Quartet, she shared a Peabody Award. McConnell is the founding violist in the Bergonzi String Quartet, the quartet in residence at the Frost School of Music, as well as the Pine Mountain Music Festival in Upper Peninsula Michigan, Music Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut, and Rocky Mountain Music Conservatory in Colorado. She has also been a resident faculty performer at Sewanee Summer Music Center in Tennessee and Bowdoin Music Festival in Maine. She is founder and director of The University of Miami String Academy, a preparatory program. Pamela McConnell received a B.M. degree from Northwestern University and an M.M. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, studying with such luminaries as Walter Trampler, Leonard Shure, George Neikrug, and Andor Toth.